Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Assassination: Rare Images from the Day

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is pictured walking across the balcony of the Lorraine Motel at approximately the spot where he was shot by a hidden assassin. This picture was made, April 3, 1968, the day before the shooting (AP/EBONY Archives)

King speaking at Mason Temple in Memphis the night before his assassination. (Photo: AP/EBONY Archives)

The rear of a rooming house opposite the Lorraine Motel where the shot that killed King is said to have come from. (Photo: Maurice Sorrell/EBONY Archives)

James Earl Ray, a convicted felon, was captured June 8, 1968 and charged with King's murder. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He died in 1998. (Photo: AP/EBONY Archives)

The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. is now a the National Civil Rights Museum and a memorial to King now sits in the spot where he fell.(Photo: Roy Lewis/EBONY Archives)

On the evening April 4, 1968 a shot rang out aimed at Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., striking him in the chin and neck, almost certainly killing him instantly. The murder sent the country into a tailspin and changed the outcome of the Civil Rights movement. Several photos taken for EBONY and others from the Associated Press have been stored in the EBONY archives for decades tell part of the story of that fateful day.